Written by Phillip Landgrebe, PhD candidate at the University of Kassel.
From 10 to 22 August, the Summer School in Digital Palaeography took place at the University of Göttingen, bringing together postgraduate students from across the globe. The programme combined introductions to Latin book scripts, codicology, and manuscript description with the teaching of digital methods, tools, and approaches relevant to the study of medieval manuscripts. Some sessions were held in the Historical Building of the SUB Göttingen, where participants could work directly with manuscripts and gain insights into the application of multispectral imaging and digital microscopy.
Learning about multispectral imaging (Photo: Anastasia Zhiling Dong)
The Summer School thus fills an important gap. Traditional courses in palaeography or codicology typically devote little attention to digital components, while digital humanities workshops often do not adequately cover the essential knowledge of the auxiliary sciences of history. The concept developed by Dr. Anna Dorofeeva and her team addresses this challenge effectively, as evidenced by the large number of applications for the sixteen available places.
The participants of the Summer School with Dr. Anna Dorofeeva and Anastasia Zhiling Dong (Photo: Yiyang Huang)
The sessions were characterised by the instructors’ high level of engagement, who encouraged participants to experiment and interact thoroughly with the material. Complex topics, such as working with TEI-XML or understanding an IIIF manifest, were presented in a clearly structured way with numerous practical recommendations. The programme repeatedly offered revealing insights, for example, into how the measurement of pixel scales in manuscript images can aid in the identification of forgeries. Additionally, the hands-on creation of different types of bookbindings proved both instructive and enjoyable.
The summer course was particularly productive when theoretical input was combined with independent work on the materials. For instance, after an introduction to fragmentology, participants catalogued Göttingen fragment holdings using Fragmentarium. A later excursion to the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel built upon this work, enabling participants to analyse previously unstudied fragments in manuscript bindings and document them in Fragmentarium again.
Examination of manuscript fragments in the Herzog August Library reading room (Photo: Marie Ellen Smith)
I would like to express my gratitude to the entire Göttingen team for the excellent organisation and the conducive working environment during the Summer School, which, both within and beyond the sessions, was marked by great helpfulness and warmth, providing all participants with an extraordinarily enriching experience.
Written by Käthe Sophie Hanschmann, PhD candidate at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
There are many good things to say about this summer school, especially regarding its thematic variety. We began with a general introduction to scripts, focusing on how to read and recognize them, along with an introduction to codicology. More importantly, the traditional lectures were complemented by practical exercises.
Photo credit to Anastasia Zhiling Dong
In the library session, we had the chance to sew quires, work with manuscripts, and analyze fragments, applying the knowledge we had gained earlier. We also enjoyed guided tours of the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB), its conservation department, and the Bibliotheca Augusta in Wolfenbüttel.
Personally, the highlight of the program was the overview of digital tools in palaeography. Many existing tools were completely new to us before joining the program. After several practical sessions where we could test the tools under expert guidance, it was inspiring to discover so many programs, methods, and ongoing projects.
The program as a whole was both enjoyable and intense. Fortunately, the welcoming atmosphere made it easy not to feel overwhelmed by the long days. Our lecturers skillfully managed the challenge of addressing participants’ different levels of knowledge and created a motivating learning environment. They carefully selected the manuscripts in the university archive that connected to our own research interests, allowing us not only to gain an overview of the wide field of digital palaeography but also to reflect on our individual projects.
I can therefore only say thank you and recommend this summer school to everyone.
Kaethe is currently pursuing her PhD at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, within the Research Training Group 2792 “Autonomy of Heteronomous Texts in Antiquity and the Middle Ages.”
Written by Denise Siyum, master’s student at Universität Hamburg
The program of the summer school is all about digital palaeography. The lectures cover a range of topics, from learning about the different hands and scripts of the Middle Ages to digital methods including HTML or MSI that allow a deeper investigation of the manuscripts, I learned a lot that I can also apply to my own research.
About this summer school
On Sunday, the day before the school officially began, we all met each other over dinner where we had the chance to talk and connect casually while getting familiar with the city. People came from all over the world, and everyone was friendly and open-minded, last but not least the organiser of the summer school, Dr Anna Dorofeeva. She made sure everyone felt included, also throughout the summer school, and that no one was left behind.
The main events of the school took place in the Institute for Digital Humanities, and usually the first half of the day was spent on lectures and exercises on palaeography in general, different scripts and introduction to digital tools. On Monday, we were introduced to the State and University Library as well as the Conservation Department before we head to lunch together in the Mensa. The afternoon was spent with presentation by us where we introduced ourselves, our research or our general background. This was really interesting as most of us had similar interests but were familiar with different methodologies.
On the following days, we regularly switched from the Institute to the library and back, getting to know MSI (=multi spectral imaging) technology, digitisation conventions, entry-level coding with HTML and CSS and early medieval scripts. Everyone also tried out their crafts ability in sewing quires together (supported sewing as well!). These practical parts of the school were really fun and helpful in understanding not only the structure of books, but also programming under supervision and getting the first gist of it.
On Friday, the end of the first week, we all became excited for our first hands-on research on manuscript fragments. Everyone was handed an unknown fragment and started researching. Anna and Mona Kirsch, the head of the collection, offered their help so it was a lot of fun and not just frustrating when you couldn’t decipher much of the script.
After this, we were glad to be out in the heated streets of Göttingen. It was a lot of information in this week, interesting and helpful, but still a lot to digest. The weekend was our free time, and many used it to explore the surroundings of the city (like the Harz region, good for hiking) or other nearby cities (like Hildesheim or Fulda).
The train ride to Wolfenbüttel– Discovering more manuscripts
Upon arrival, we were greeted with some refreshments, before we locked away our stuff and listened to an introduction about the library and its collectors presented by the head of the manuscript department, Dr Christian Heitzmann.
Afterwards, we spread out to walk around the small village that is Wolfenbüttel (beautiful Fachwerkhäuser!) where we had lunch.
Everyone was back on time for the manuscript session – some of us ordered specific manuscripts to look at, the others randomly chose one of the offered objects and started their research on them.
After working through the whole afternoon plus an additional half an hour, we were really tired and glad to walk to the train station to start our two-and-a-half hours journey back to beloved Göttingen.
Looking Back on the summer school
Dr. Dorofeeva was so kind as to shift the starting time of the next day half an hour back so that everyone could get enough sleep for the second week. It was again a mixture of the introduction of different scripts like Uncial and sessions about book bindings, book furniture, or digital tools like digital microscopy that allows a very close look at inks and parchment. The second week flew by so fast, and on Friday we were allowed to look at some precious objects that the library of Göttingen holds before we all had to say goodbye to Dr.Dorofeeva and her great team. It was a wonderful two weeks that taught us a lot.
The use of digital tools is a growing aspect in research and all the more important in palaeography, where computational methods could help identify local scripts and even more. The field is growing, and learning about digital humanities and methods is inevitable. The summer school and Anna Dorofeeva showed me just how important and gave a great introduction to a diverse field of possibilities that need further investigation to apply them to individual research.
I would highly recommend this summer school as it is intense, but it is so valuable, well-structured, and fun.
Author: Davide Obili, PhD student at the University of Bologna
Attending the Summer School of Digital Palaeography in Göttingen was a fantastic experience, and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Manuscript Studies or Digital Humanities.
The programme offered a well-balanced mix of theory and practice, giving us a great introduction to the history of Latin scripts and the material aspects of the medieval book, as well as to a wide range of digital tools and methods for Palaeography and Digital Text Editing, which was exciting as it showed us new possibilities in the field. One of the highlights was getting to see and work withreal medieval manuscripts and fragments, both in Göttingen and during our day trip to Wolfenbüttel.
Anna Dorofeeva and all the other teachers were not only highly knowledgeable but also approachable and friendly, and the entire organising team was always available to help us, creating a welcoming and supportive learning environment. Meeting and connecting with the other participants was another great part of the experience, as it made the stay in Göttingen educational and fun.
It was an enriching experience, and I would recommend it to anyone considering applying for future summer schools.
In the summer of 2023, Göttingen University hosted a 12-day summer school program dedicated to the study of digital paleography. This intensive program delved into various paleographical topics, offering participants a comprehensive exploration of Latin manuscript scripts from the medieval.
The curriculum was thoughtfully structured, with morning sessions focused on the history and transcription of Latin scripts, and afternoon sessions introducing participants to cutting-edge digital methodologies and tools. These included fragmentology, codicology, editing, cataloging, TEI-XML, and advanced imaging techniques such as hyper- and multispectral imaging.
The summer school provided a unique opportunity for participants to engage deeply with leading experts and professionals in the field, acquiring the latest knowledge and innovative approaches to the study of paleography.
Most of the sessions took place at the Digital Humanities department, where a typical day began with instructional lectures followed by hands-on exercises or samples for practice. This format ensured that the knowledge we learn was directly applicable to our research, aligning perfectly with the overarching goal of the program: to equip us with practical skills and insights that we could integrate into our academic work.
Dr. Dorofeeva, the head of paleography, led many of the sessions, guiding us through the major scripts to provide a condensed yet thorough overview of paleographical study. Her teaching style was highly interactive and we had a lot of chances to pose questions and to discuss several interesting topics. In afternoon sessions at the university library, she guided us in selecting specific scripts for individual research projects. In line with the program’s focus on digitalizing this discipline, we were encouraged to use digital tools to document and enrich the archival information of the manuscripts we studied.
Ms. Kipke, an expert in image science, delivered a captivating lecture on digital approaches to image analysis. Her research, which involves intricate details and complex methodologies, was nothing short of fascinating, and her presentation was exceptionally informative.
One of the highlights of the program was a session at the Göttingen University Library with Professor Winfried Rudolf. He gave an insightful lecture on insular scripts and granted us the rare opportunity to examine a writing sample from the university’s collection up close.
Overall, the summer school was an incredible experience, offering invaluable learning opportunities from top experts in the field. It was an excellent opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills that will undoubtedly enhance my research and further my studies in paleography.
The Disticha Catonis is not, contrary to its name, a classical text. Though it was originally attributed to the famously conservative Roman senator Cato the Elder (or possibly his son, Cato the Younger), its true author is unknown, but probably lived in the 3rd or 4th century CE, up to four hundred years later than either Cato. However, this Latin text was extremely popular in classrooms throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, its two-line hexameters providing moral advice and guidance to diligent students who often translated the text into their own vernacular languages.
Such a translation accompanies the 15th-century copy of the text held by the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen. The Anglicana script with its looping flourishes and long descenders records each couplet of the Disticha Catonis (sometimes imperfectly) and pairs it with an English translation, which is often several lines longer than the original Latin couplet. In addition to the Disticha, this manuscript contains several other texts within the same binding. Altogether, these texts form a motley collection in several different hands, including genealogical tables, copied letters between Pope Leo and King Charles of France, and a listing of Eastbury sheep farmers, just to name a few. Most of these hands, however, appear to be roughly contemporary—except for a few striking lines at the end of the text.
Several students gather around a manuscript during the 2023 Göttingen International Palaeography Summer School to examine the text and illustrations.
On the very last pages of the manuscript, in a darker ink and later hand, a new language appears—a few phrases of Greek at the bottom of the final folio. This is the only Greek in the manuscript, and its appearance is both exciting and startling. While Latin remained an important language, especially for Western literature, scholarship, and diplomacy, for centuries after it was no longer the lingua franca, ancient Greek language and literature was much more neglected until the Renaissance turned to an idealized vision of classical antiquity as a model for cultural excellence.
The recto of the final folio with text in the Göttingen copy of the Disticha Catonis, with two lines of Greek finishing the page.
But Greek wasn’t totally unknown in those intervening centuries, and as interest in ancient literature, culture, and art rose again, it became a subject of study once more, appearing not only in schoolroom texts, but also sometimes scrawled in the margins of other works—like here. A closer look at this handful of lines gives a glimpse into one person’s engagement with Latin, Greek, and the relationship between language, learning, and literature.
The first pair of Greek lines (74r) reads: πολλα μέταξυ πελεῖ κυλιχος | κ[α]ὶ κείλεος αχρ[ου]. Once the abbreviations have been deciphered, the sentence is perfectly recognizable Greek—except for the word κείλεος, which simply doesn’t exist. But this puzzle is easily solved when we realize that the phrase is an ancient proverb, which has been attributed without evidence to the both the Greek writer Palladas and the more famous epic poet Homer, but first appears as an already well-known saying in the 2nd-century Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Locating this source reveals the anonymous writer’s error—the word κείλεος should actually be χείλεος. This in turn leads us to a complete translation—“Many things come between the cup and the topmost lip,” or, as Paton translates more idiomatically, “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.”
But why the mistake? In fact, the Greek letters kappa (κ) and chi (χ) sound quite similar to the English ear, so mistaking one for the other would be quite easy, especially if the writer was recalling the lines from memory or listening to someone else dictate them, rather than copying directly from another written source. Of course, there’s no way to be certain that’s what happened; the writer could also have copied from a source with an error or misread the original text. Still, this small slip in otherwise very good Greek suggests that our writer knew the language well—but perhaps not perfectly.
A similar conclusion can be drawn from the Greek on 74v, which reads: φιλωτιμος πατὴρ | ὅν φιλεῖ θεος αποθνήσκει νέος. The first line, “honor-loving father,” is fairly generic and could be equally fitting in an ancient context or a later one. The second, however, quite nearly matches a famous quotation from a fragment of Menander: ὃν οἱ θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνῄσκει νέος, meaning “he whom the gods love dies young.” Once again, our unknown writer has not gotten the quote exactly right—the article οἱ is missing, and we have a singular verb and subject (φιλεῖ θεος) instead of the original plural (θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν).
The verso of the Disticha Catonis’ final folio at the end of the text.
The writer is clearly familiar with the Menander quotation, but there are small errors. The writer might have just forgotten to add the article, and we may also note the switched positions of subject and verb in the phrases φιλεῖ θεος and θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν. This is not a grammatical mistake, but not a perfect quotation either, especially given the change from singular forms to plural ones. But that change might not be a mistake at all. In the first line, φιλωτιμος πατὴρ is singular—perhaps the writer changed θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν to φιλεῖ θεος on purpose so that it agreed with the singular subject φιλωτιμος πατὴρ, intentionally changing “gods” to one God—the honor-loving Father. Is this a reflection of the cultural shift from Menander’s polytheism to Christian monotheism? It’s impossible to know for certain whether this is a clever adaptation of Menander’s original text or a misremembered quotation.
Either way, taken together, these two bits of Greek do make it clear that the writer was familiar not only with the language (note the accent marks included in the phrases), but with ancient Greek literature as well. Though there are minor mistakes, this is no newbie student practicing his alphabet. It’s also worth noting that these quotations fit the spirit of the original text, the Disticha Catonis. Though other texts fill the pages between the Disticha and the later Greek, these short additions are just the sort of quick, quippy wisdom encapsulated by the Disticha Catonis. Thus, they make a fitting finish to this delightful collection of texts!
You never know what you might find in the margins of a manuscript (or an incunable), but the little notes and details found there can add richness and depth to our understanding of the texts themselves, and the people who worked with them. Göttingen’s copy of the Disticha Catonis has passed through many hands over the centuries since it was first produced, but every reader had their own story, and the faintest traces of those stories can still be found within the pages if we look closely.
Bibliography
The Greek Anthology, Volume IV: Book 10: The Hortatory and Admonitory Epigrams. Book 11: The Convivial and Satirical Epigrams. Book 12: Strato’s Musa Puerilis. Translated by W. R. Paton. Loeb Classical Library 85. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918.
Menander. Aspis. Georgos. Dis Exapaton. Dyskolos. Encheiridion. Epitrepontes. Edited and translated by W. G. Arnott. Loeb Classical Library 132. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.
